How Humans Became Extinct
by Amy David

Furniture stores saw loveseats in half after months
on final clearance. The dairyman sells eggs in cartons
of one. Still lifes line the walls of the portrait gallery.

Letter openers sharp as the day they were forged
head out in search of other work: picking teeth,
buttering bread, scraping the paint from the sill.

The pawns idle in any direction they choose,
no black king to attack. Untested shuttlecocks
are sent over the net on suicide missions.

Young women are touched less than the lowest
notes on the keyboard. They dream each night
of the symphony that would bring them hands.

The dying rock their chairs on front porches that face
away from the street. They leave fortunes to the
dirty laundry or debts to be paid in fingernails.

And a stranger passing through at sixty miles per hour,
cell phone budding from her ear, notices only this:
nobody drives in the carpool lane.

 

AMY DAVID works as a process improvement manager in Chicago, IL. She has been writing and performing poetry since 2004, when she wandered into an open mic in a dimly lit jazz club.

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